


Specularity

by cheetoriko



Series: Transparency and Opacity [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (god idk really), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Graduation, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Swearing, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 16:59:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheetoriko/pseuds/cheetoriko
Summary: It's been a month since Lucian has talked to Kristopher, since he doesn't even know if Kristopher likes him anymore. It's a month until Kristopher graduates, and he thinks he is in love with the guy who hasn't talked to him for a month.





	Specularity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> okay heads up the tenses might be wack because i've barely edited this because at the time of writing this, i'm about to be actually spanked (ooh) off the computer so this might be a unreadable MESS right now and if that is the case, oospy.

It’s been a month since Lucian last talked to Kristopher.

He uses excuses for not seeing him – like wanting to focus on his studies and all the shit that comes with it. Every excuse he comes up with though was disposed of by Ciara and Noah every lunchtime with every twinge of Ciara’s smile and with every occasional but darted glance from Noah’s eyes.

But that’s what excuses are for, really. For Lucian, excuses have become his safety blanket and his barrier. He would always make up some excuse for not talking to Kristopher (like he’d even want to talk) and he would succeed, despite Lucian knowing that Noah is on the edge of literally jumping out of his chair someday at lunchtime and dragging him to talk to Kristopher (he would be stupid not to notice that Noah’s foot is bouncing on the ground every damn lunchtime because he just gets so damn impatient with Lucian). And with that success, Lucian would be blocked off from talking to Kristopher.

Not talking to Kristopher though is actually Hell on earth. Because even though his mouth is shut towards Kristopher, Lucian’s eyes are wide open to every glimpse he can get of Kristopher. He still sees him in the hallways – with his narrowed eyes, stiffen with his usual scorn; with his scruffy hair, being half-heartedly contained within the beanie he has also half-heartedly thrown on. He looks like a mess. Lucian knows that Kristopher knows this too because Kristopher has this habit of closing every single part of him in more and more, with his crossed arms and slouched shoulders acting as the vacuum of drawing every part of him into oblivion. It’s like a black hole, for Lucian anyway. I mean, if there is a walking black hole in the hallway, could you really look away? Considering that said black hole is still, unfortunately, very fucking attractive?

Lucian feels like he is trapped within this black hole. Because every that happens outside this black hole is just obscure, muggy in Lucian’s mind. Lucian sleeps around now, just to try and escape this black hole and find another one that’s at least second best. But every one-night stand is draining, actually sucking the life out of him.

Maybe Lucian is the mess around here. And maybe that’s why he finds himself sitting longer with Maxwell even after class has ended.

Lucian doesn’t get it. Maxwell has this content indifference about him – from the way his clothes hug him at the arms to the way his smile never flickers because, really, he doesn’t really seem to care too much about things. Lucian doesn’t get it because Maxwell is Kristopher’s ex. Lucian thinks he is Kristopher’s ex – because he said they were a thing, according to his big mouth, and now they’re not, according to his broad-mindedness. Lucian seems to get Kristopher’s annoyance now, as he finds himself tapping his elbow, just to stop the energy in his body that’s telling him to leave again and make more excuses and not even think about Kristopher again.

“I need your advice,” Lucian says this like it was a mouthful with his exasperation. Maxwell tilts his cheek onto his hand, loosening up like string unwinding from a ball of yarn.

“What’s up?” Maxwell smiles with sincerity like he always does. Lucian assumes that his eyes are just as conceited with perked up eyebrows (exam time has rolled around, so Maxwell has been taking all-nighters, so his eye bags have gotten worse. Lucian doesn’t get that either – he claims that he will look like a nightmare if he comes into school with his sleep-deprived eyes, even though Lucian likes Maxwell’s eyes. But alas, Maxwell’s fringe has become overgrown again just so he can take Lucian’s entitlement from seeing his eyes away).

“Don’t get mad,” (Like Maxwell will get mad), “But I…fuck, it sounds stupid aloud.”

Lucian flings himself back into his chair, satisfied by the slight pain he feels when his back bumps into the solid wood. Even just staring with little effort in the hallway is making his headache worse. It looks like Kristopher never fails to engulf the life out of him, even when he isn’t here.

“You like Kristopher, don’t you?”

Lucian swings up and flashes a look at Maxwell, who’s indifferent as he can get (which is, very indifferent).

“H-How did you know?”

“I kind of always knew, I mean you flirted with him even when he was boyfriend, right?”

Lucian scoffs like he messed up there. Like he thought it would be completely unnoticeable that he had made those coy remarks to Kristopher, right in front of Maxwell.

“Yeah, but…I don’t even think he likes me anymore.” Lucian feels like he is spitting out the last part, no, choking out the last part. He vacantly looks down at his hand, as his stomach becomes hollow, as the black hole gets worse and worse. It’s like he can’t even speak about him without feeling that he is just get swallowed up like he is going to disappear.

“I think Kristopher likes you.” Lucian blinks, eyes sliding towards Maxwell. There is something different about Maxwell like his genuine comment had more weight that he would like it to seem. Like Maxwell didn’t want Lucian to know that something inside him struck and knocked over that indifference he wants to keep going, because, God, although Lucian is a brat, he is still his friend.

Maxwell still clenches his teeth underneath his closed grin as Lucian is a brat.

Ah.

Maybe that is it. Lucian is a brat, but Maxwell is the contrast. He was unwavering, unemotional support to Kristopher – just a mannequin’s shoulder to cry on, just a joke book to make him smile. Lucian is not any of those things. Lucian is unneeded, full-mouthed insensitivity – but his shoulder and smile are warm.

Lucian is nothing that Kristopher wanted – but really, what he needed.

 

* * *

 

It’s a month until Kristopher graduates.

He feels it, unfortunately, in the glaring sunlight and the unsavoury heat. He even feels it in here, where the sunlight still manages to wriggle through the windows, bouncing off the sharpness of the art room tables, and where the heat is humidly just sitting, stubbornly unmoving to the fan that Daniel has set up in the room.  

Kristopher has decided to keep Daniel company, for some reason or another (that some reason being that Robin has been forced by his parents to visit Luxembourg for what must be the twenty-seventh time in his lifetime – Kristopher swears this is the only time he has heard Robin sound remotely bratty as he complains that he doesn’t want to go because he, to his earnest credit, needs to study more). Daniel has thrown his off his leather jacket a little too close to the fan (Kristopher got a rush of anxiety when he hurled it off – with the sleeve almost getting caught in the fan), and his hands glide across his canvas with a gentleness you wouldn’t except for such ropy arms belonging to the powerhouse that is Daniel Lionelle. Kristopher thinks that his arms are in such contrast to Lucian’s threadlike arms. Kristopher almost smirks, but he remembers who Lucian was.

“Do you want, I don’t know, coffee or anything, Émile?” Daniel kind of turns his head to face Kristopher, his paintbrush fluttering up and down in his fiddling hands as he so eagerly waits for a reply. Kristopher already has coffee though.

“It’s fine.” Kristopher brings his feet up to his hand, grasping onto them as he aimlessly stares away from Daniel, peering around. His knees are drawn out, and the sun is bouncing off him now.

“If you ever need anything, just call me. I’m just pretty fucking grateful that you’re even here.” Daniel’s voice is peppy, despite his gruff tone. Kristopher now watches Daniel paint, watching the opacity of the oil paint fade into transparency, in what artists like to call a gradient.

In what Kristopher likes to call Lucian Elizondo.

He remembered how Lucian kissed him at that party if you can even call it that. He was drowning himself into Kristopher, it was like Lucian had decided to crush him into the wall until he just disappeared. Like he was dousing every essence of his unprofessionalism, which was so messy and so raw and so bloody incompetent, into Kristopher so that only Lucian would be left. Kristopher’s mind was dazed, overdosed in thoughts of trying to scramble about, trying to piece everything that was going on. What he was feeling wasn’t transparency, even though he felt like he was vanishing the deeper Lucian would kiss him (yet again, if you wouldn’t call it soul-sucking). It must have been opacity, as Lucian was kissing him, in his personal bubble, clinging onto his thighs and knocking his leg between his thighs, as if to keep in there in his spotlight, for his audience of his peers who are already over their head with the bottles upon bottles of alcohol they have literally just inhaled or who are lackadaisical, anime-shirt wearing lowlifes or who are bozos with pink hair dye and bad fashion sense. 

He remembered that note Lucian left on the table next to him. How it was as bumbling, as awkward and as lame as he was the night before. Kristopher liked that, for whatever reason. It was a Lucian that wasn’t full of hot air – the Lucian that felt more than clear as polished diamonds skin, that felt more than a perfectly curled and cornered fringe, that felt more than towering height, standing on two pathetically beanstalks which were apparently “legs”.

But Lucian stopped talking to him. And Kristopher wondered if it was really how Noah said – sexual tension. Sexual. Kristopher began watching Lucian, against the will he broke in what seems like years ago at that party where Lucian was droopy shouldered, a downcast across the dancefloor with his dragging feet. Lucian seemed to be having sex with anyone in a four-foot radius. Lucian would swing himself into bathrooms, closets, out of hallways just to come out looking tired, fed up (Kristopher didn’t see Lucian’s face before he left after that party). Kristopher supposed he was practice. He was the first shot. And all that scorching, crimson making out was sexual tension to be in the hot air.

Kristopher thinks he must have loved Lucian. And he wanted to give him so much more because he thinks there is now more than something, even though Lucian isn’t talking to him anymore.

 

* * *

 

It’s been two months since Lucian has talked to Kristopher. And there are no months left to wait until Kristopher graduates.

Kristopher doesn’t like parties. Lucian knows this, of course, by the way, he acted at every single damn party he has been invited to. Crossed arms clutched together, legs trembling and knocking together, face cramped in by tapered eyebrows and bitten lips. So, Lucian is not surprised when seeing him sitting out the pre-graduation party, on the stairs of the tacky building his people have decided to get totally wasted it. Kristopher is following his finger around the edges of his cup (which takes Lucian aback – this is ‘I-don’t-drink-because-I-want-to-seem-better-than-everyone-else-by-being-the-only-sober-one-here’), which his other hand clenches onto so tightly that the juice inside it could just burst out into his face, which would probably annoy him enough to leave altogether. His gaze is unfixed, so Lucian, despite his chest compressing inwards so much that he feels like he could stop breathing and just straight up start choking in front of Kristopher, calls out.

“You’re drinking.”

It is so lame, lame enough to be Lucian. Lucian who is looking down at Kristopher with his hands in his pockets, with his grin hanging back as this Lucian does not know if it’s okay to laugh yet. Kristopher just absorbs his presence, gawking at him. He realizes he has to say something though.

“This is fruit punch.”

“But you’re actually fucking drinking.”

Kristopher cringes to the side, and Lucian just wants to start kissing him right here and now. He knows how to kiss people now without seeming like a complete dunce, and the only person he really wants to kiss is Kristopher. Lucian fumbles into a step next to Kristopher, sitting down, deciding that he shouldn’t kiss Kristopher. Yet.

“You say that if I’ve not taken a sip of water since I was, I don’t know, five or something…” Kristopher blows a puff of sarcasm into the air. His lips curl up into a grin. Lucian sprawls all the way back, his legs as straight as a ruler and running down the stairs.

“How do I not know that?” Lucian tips his head towards Kristopher, who scoffs involuntarily, who also angles himself forward.

“Jeez, you act like you don’t know how a fucking human being works…um, yeah.”

“I don’t know, really. I just pretend to know, just so I can get by.” Lucian smirks, “I guess I can’t hide that imperfection away from you, hmm?”

Lucian knows that Kristopher grips onto every imperfection, wherever it’s from himself or anyone else. Kristopher swallows, and his neck appears to shrink. He wants to shrink away, again.

“I’ve not seen you for ages. Why do you decide to come back now?” It’s like his throat is being stabbed – his voice is coarse. Lucian’s chest hitches up, his lungs about to give out with his audible gasp.

“I…I wanted to see you,” Lucian slams his hands on his face, pulling his skin down as his hands drag downwards, “Fuck, I just wanted to see you again. One last time. Up close so you don’t even just seem like something I’ve made up in my mind.”

Kristopher closes in on Lucian, lips pressed together into a frown as if to say “Do better, dipshit”.

“I know I was bad. And I know you hate me for it.”

“I think I hated you more when you decided not to talk for me for two damn months,” Kristopher falters, “I didn’t want to believe that you were, um, some horsefucker…but you kind of…did.”

“Shit, yeah. Yeah – I’ve been awful.” Lucian sits up and faces Kristopher. He has his fist over his mouth as if to cover up his trembling chin. But Lucian can still see it, and it just hits him over the head like a baseball bat. Fuck.

Lucian finds his hands on Kristopher’s shoulders, that would usually jolt away in indignation if you even had the audacity to think of comforting him. Lucian wanted to comfort him because he did have the nerve that Kristopher thought he hated (turns out Kristopher actually loved Lucian’s guts that must be made out of fucking steel).

“I’m sorry.” It’s the most cliché, most stereotypical, most unforgivable apology in the book. Yet, Kristopher takes it in. He just limps onto Lucian’s shoulder, like a dead man, and his expression slacks, like his soul is as vacant as his stare.

Kristopher doesn’t even cry. He remembers that he didn’t even cry when he broke up with Maxwell. Is he breaking up with Lucian? Was there even anything to break up over? All Kristopher knew was Lucian making out with him at the party, taking him to his bedroom, and leaving a half-assed note on his table to make more loose strings.

But Lucian holds up as if to keep him there. As if he let go, Kristopher would dissolve into dust and fly away with the wind, never to been seen again.

In the distance, Kristopher hears fireworks. He must have fucking missed all those peers of his rushing outside, tumbling over the stairs, just to light off some fireworks that they are probably too wasted to put off. Still, they burst and crackle into the night sky, with colours and brightness and all.

Kristopher wonders if this is the transparency he wanted. With him, alone with Lucian, with him on one of Lucian’s drawn-out shoulder, staring with wet eyes that prove that he hasn’t actually just died.

No.

Kristopher wonders if this is opacity then. With him, neglecting his peers, to be almost crying on Lucian’s shoulder, who he had very publicly kissed at a very public party. 

Also no.

Kristopher thinks this must be specularity. It can’t be called either transparency, what Kristopher so wants, or opacity, what Lucian frankly is. So, Kristopher settles on that.

Specularity.

 


End file.
